Geek Studies

[ellenkushner]

(inspired by writingjen's comment yesterday: )

Robin Hood Studies . . . Arthurian Studies . . . Shakespeare . . . [your passion here - they do have academic courses in Anime now, don't they?] . . . .

Those of you who've taken the Academic Route, I'm curious: Is there a great difference between informally loving something and formally studying it?

For extra credit:
Why did Shakespeare have no interest in writing a Robin Hood play?

Comments

[thistlerose.livejournal.com]

Is there a great difference between informally loving something and formally studying it?

YES. Because geeking out with professors is better than pie.

Extra credit:

Because it would have been disrespectful toward the monarchy? And/or because the version of Robin Hood that we know and love today had not yet been established?

[aidara.livejournal.com]

YES. Because geeking out with professors is better than pie.

Seconded. :) I took a class on C. S. Lewis last semester and was afraid that it would ruin my liking for the Narnian stories, but it mostly just ended up deepening my understanding of them and convincing me that Lewis was a horrible misogynist.

Though to be honest, I've never been a huge fan of Narnia. Tolkien, on the other hand, is a different story. I'm taking a class on his work next semester, so we'll see how it goes.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

My first thought was that you meant studying geeks, their sub-cultures, and the larger societies reaction to them.

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

Oh yes.

My one great love is probably music, particularly 19th and early 20th century music. But I hate writing about it academically! I find some of the neurological research around music perception interesting, but in the writing there's just no give and take. The discussions seem so secondary to what is important. What a contrast to textual scholarship, and particularly English scholarship, which is more like a collaborative art form-- the way music performance is a collaborative art form, or collage.

I have one colleague who deliberately studies Renaissance drama because he *doesn't* have any particular affinity for it, and didn't want his scholarship to be biased. Brilliant guy. Strange decision... for me, I think that in academia it's important to have passion for something, but it's often a different kind of obsessiveness. I can read Highlander fanfic all day (apparently... *sigh*), but I have absolutely no desire to write a paper about it. It just doesn't have enough to offer an *academic* dialogue, not enough for a collaboration on that particular level.

(er, I can't think if I've ever commented here before-- Julian Y.'s girlfriend here, we met at a play last summer.)

[rozk.livejournal.com]

As someone who has not so much studied things academically as studied them in order to write books academics take seriously, I think it is all about structure. The more you determine that you will understand something in order to write about it, the more you come to love it and want that passion to swell further so that it motivates your understanding and informs your writing - sort of thing. It's the difference between passionate romantic strumming and turning it into a proper sonata-form movement.

As to the Robin Hood question, it's a bit of all the above, I'd say. The legends and ballads were mostly around, but it was the Romantics who systematized the material - Scott in particular. The whole bandits allied to a rightful king aspect of the situation probably wasn't the problem - after all, you get that in As You Like It with a specific link to Robin Hood in the dialogue - but it may be that something more specifically English would have seemed more subversive. The simple fact that he had used a similar situation would probably have weighed with him, along with the fact that it is a difficult set of stories to turn into a plot. You either have the story of how King Richard came home again, or you have the story of the Death of Robin - neither of these strike me as particularly Shakespeare's sort of thing because the first is the sort of theodicy he tended not to be all that keen on unless everyone learns a valuable lesson, and the second is a bit of a downer without the catharsis of tragedy.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

Or an Arthurian play, for that matter?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Some time ago, Ken MacLeod asked me to write this review, and I did, and posted it on rec.arts.sf.written.

Review of Branagh's Shakespeare's Arthur, King of the Britons

Arthur is one of those plays we all know - we read it for class, we hear snippets of it quoted, we've seen it done. It's easy to think of it as something dusty and irrelevent. It was good to see it performed uncut and looking as good as this - the language vibrant, Shakespeare
at the top of his powers, the story so dramatic, so touching, and the funny bits (Kay - a John Cleese cameo - dropping the cheeses springs to mind) genuinely funny. The anachronisms - they didn't have castles like that, or bishops, never mind cannons - aren't the point, this is
Shakespeare, not history.

It's hard to review something which forms part of the cultural gestalt.

I think that must equally make Arthur is hard to film. There are lines that are quoted and requoted out of context, so much so that delivering them in context, smoothly, as plausible dialogue, becomes almost as
challenging as "To be, or not to be" or "A handbag?"

It's enough to make me wish for a time machine to have seen the first Globe production where I could have had an audience around me who would have shivered to Mordred's "I will my father's name trail through the mire"
speech, rather than one that is expecting it. Which isn't to say that Kline didn't deliver it very well. That's more than I can say for the other most famous line. Frankly, I think Emma Thompson was miscast as Guinevere. She didn't bring out the essential pathos of the character. It's
a pity, especially as Branagh and Everett were such a good Arthur/Lancelot pairing. But without sympathy for Guinevere the whole story is idiotic -- if her character isn't sufficient to say "The two best men in all the world have loved me" and mean it, then the rest of it, all the chivalry,
all the pageantry, all the betrayal is hollow. I can't quite see why either of them (never mind both of them) would have wanted that Guinevere, and that isn't a problem I've ever had with it before.

I loved Connery's Merlin - in fact the Merlin/Nimue parts were my favourite in general. I'll always see Merlin like that now, I think that was the definitive rendering of the part. And Paltrow was wonderful as Nimue -- maybe she should have been Guinevere. The woman can act, she isn't
self-conscious about it. I know there has been some controversy about the way the immuring scene was done, but I really liked it -- OK, maybe it's usually done with Nimue holding an oak branch, and I once saw it
done on stage with an entirely imaginary tree, but why not use CGI to show the tree? That way when he invites her to "embrace me for all time" we can see it with our eyes and Merlin's, as tree and woman together. (It even moved like Paltrow.) Someone did giggle, but I don't care. Having
Mordred watching was a nice touch - and he does speak immediately after, after all.

I don't think it will come as a spoiler to anyone if I say that almost everyone dies at the end. I found the way the last speech was done, Nimue's voice-over as a tiny light moves over all the bodies and then slipping away along the stream through the dark trees, reminiscent of the
recent film of A Midsummer Night's Dream. That was odd, but also fitting, reminding me that this too is a fairy play, though the dark and not the light side of faerie.

You should definitely see it.

[calligrafiti.livejournal.com]

I wonder if writing a Robin Hood play would have been politically expedient, especially during Shakespeare's earlier period. A story built around an outlaw hero working against agents of an illegitimate ruler until the return of the "real" king might not have gone down well under Elizabeth I. Things were calmer toward the end of her reign than at the beginning, but still. Her early life saw a procession of rulers whose legitimacy was always under question and her own rule was plagued by people questioning her own right to the throne.

Maybe it would have been better under James I, but I understand there were a few other claimants to the English throne at the time of his ascension, too.

[gaedhal.livejournal.com]

That also begs the question as to why Shakespeare never dealt
with the Arthurian material, either. He tended to go for
Roman sources or continental stuff -- Lear excluded. Maybe
it was what was trendy at the time -- was Mallory considered
old fashioned? Robin Hood too lowbrow? He was writing for
the popular taste, after all.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Flippant answer: Studying it academically takes all the fun out of it.

Okay, that's not really true, but I've had at least one series ruined for me after I wrote a paper on it. Hee. But usually the big challenge is connecting the thing you love to established theory in your field.

The end result of that is that even if you still love the thing, you'll never be able to comprehensibly talk about it to your friends again (unless they're in the same academic field).

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

There are Robin Hood plays contemporary with Shakespeare: The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington and the Death ditto, by Anthony Munday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Munday) (no, Wikipedia isn't a great source, but it's not a bad place to start). I haven't read them, so I can't tell you anything more about them than that.

Speaking as someone who has a Ph.D. and has chosen to leave academia, I think the biggest difference between studying something academically and loving it informally is that in academics, you have benchmarks and standards: an outside authority to tell you whose scholarship is respectable and whose isn't, or to tell you about the existence of resources you'd otherwise have no idea existed. And to say, okay, when you have this much knowledge and critical insight into your subject, you have this level of expertise, and when you have this much knowledge and critical insight you have this level of expertise. It gives you a way to judge your progress--which can be very hard if you're trying to learn about something entirely on your own. At least in the liberal arts, there's nothing in academic scholarship that you can't do or learn or learn to do on your own (although primary research is going to be easier with access to an academic library). matociquala is every bit as accomplished a Renaissance scholar as I am.

Ideally, of course, studying something academically has the additional benefit of teaching you how to study academically, from the basics of close reading, to footnote chasing, to critical thinking and the use of theory, to using Pollard and Redgrave's Short-Title catalogue of books printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English books printed abroad, 1475-1640. But, sadly, that isn't always the case.

[shrewreader.livejournal.com]

My understanding from the late Kramer was that he did -- it just (a) didn't get finished and (b) couldn't find a willing theater (due to the whole disrespectful of monarchy [Although, the Evil Catholic King tactic, presumably, could have been used to great advantage] thing] and / or (c) some other reason I can't recall as it was buried in the horror that was the Constance Gardner dominated translations from across the driveway in the Russian dept.

Also, this memory is about 12 - 14 years old, ergo quite possibly badly faulty.

[belledewinter.livejournal.com]

There may be a psychological element involved somewhere that makes *insert-object-of-study-here* less-nice when you have to study it. Maybe there are parts of fandom that informally-loved-subject that wouldn't be as appealing to you and that you'd still be forced to swallow.

I wouldn't mind geeking out for a living, though. ♥

[coloredink.livejournal.com]

I like linguistics, but I don't think I'd want to study it, taking class after class after class after class and writing papers and worrying about grades and buying books. . . ugh. I'd rather geek out with my linguistics friends and/or read about linguistics on Wikipedia.

I did study English and graduate with a bachelor's degree in it, which is probably the most useless degree ever, asides from Anthropology. It also did virtually nothing to improve my writing, although I got a lot better at bullshitting essays and picking professors that I knew were going to be an easy A.

[tacithydra.livejournal.com]

Is your icon a very nonplussed radish?

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

I imagine it depends a lot on the fields. I study English lit and in my area, a lot of the work is getting away from the personal response that makes the reading pleasurable. That's not to say that the result isn't pleasurable itself; but it's very different to fall in love with a character on the one hand, and figure out exactly what you're in love with or how the author hit your buttons, on the other hand. It also means you can enjoy yourself tremendously when studying a book you don't like! Or pick apart something you hated, aesthetically or politically or whatever, and get some joy out of that.

There is also academic politics/collegiality, external benchmarks, a horrible job market, etc etc, but those strike me as specific to contemporary university culture rather than formal study itself. Of course what I've described above is also a very modern view. (I know I'm in a minority in enjoying the rigor and restrictions just as well as the schmoopy fannish adoration.)

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I love academic study but dislike a lot of aspects of a job in academia, which is one reason I teach/tutor individually (including standardized test prep) and present papers at the ICFA, Mythcon, and so on.

My academic background did make me more rigorous, I know, and also taught me what had been done, so I could both use it and avoid reinventing the wheel.

[krismcd59.livejournal.com]

This is a fabulous question. I'm lucky enough to research and teach in the field that I love -- Renaissance Drama -- but I also dream of writing fiction about it because the researching and teaching aren't quite enough by themselves. I have to tear my attention away from the material in order to attend to my students' questions, practical problems, writing, etc. -- and I have a responsibility not to get so caught up in my enthusiasm for a play or a poem or a topic that I forget what the students need from me just to get through the next exam or essay assignment. It's hard, too, to consciously pull back when I'm narrating a particularly juicy bit of historical info or an interpretation of a scene. So I can see why some profs might be more comfortable teaching/researching something they can be more detached from -- and, in a way, it might be better for the students. I know that I am better about letting the students discover the material without my "interference" when it's material I'm not as knowledgeable about. It's always a balancing act. And regarding Robin Hood, I agree with all the comments above and think it's partly for the same reason Shakespeare didn't write an Arthurian play either (although there is an ongoing debate about whether he wrote a lost play called "The Death of Arthur.") As rozk noted, his references to Robin Hood in several plays, including As You Like It, are usually a metaphor for cliched rural traditional tales, even though Will never met a cliche he couldn't wrestle to the ground and make his own... Ben Jonson actually did write a Robin Hood play at the end of his life (The Sad Shepherd), but didn't finish it, probably because of ill health, but it was also kind of falling apart at the point he quit. And possibly, the Robin Hood story was just too ubiquitous to bother dramatizing in its own right -- it was performed in circle-dance form every spring and summer holiday, and was the basis of countless children's games. In a way, it would be like making a play out of "The Night Before Christmas" or "The Farmer in the Dell." OK, enough...now I need to check out the profiles of everyone who commented here -- I think there are lots of kindred spirits present!

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

the difference is all in your advisors/mentors/professors and classmates. it's hard to undertake formal study without them; it's easy to love things all by yourself, if your fellow amateurs drive you bananas.

that said, ime it's been totally worth it.

Hard but interesting question

[medievalist.livejournal.com]

I've deliberately avoided taken classes in SF/Fantasy in grad school, once I realized that I'd been, well, traumatized, sort of, by Ph.D. qualifying exams.

That said, I still love medieval lit, and the lit I'm writing about, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Sir Orfeo, and Thomas of Erceldoune, and the Mabinogi . . . it's all about medieval fairies and fantasy and spec fic.

And I love it, passionately, still. And I'm citing and writing about modern fairy fantasy too, so I've ended up studying it just the same.

And what makes you think Shakespeare had no interest? He might have actually written one . . .

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

When you work on something academically, you have to hold yourself to a higher set of standards, and you have to commit to approaching the work with some degree of...what's the word I'm looking for, not rigor, not objectivity, but...um...completeness and argument. Academically, you have to be able to make a complex, detailed, and grounded argument, and you have to make sure it can stand up. I do that for the stuff I work on. I don't have to do it for the stuff I just love. I make no argument about Joe Strummer, except that he was amazing and wonderful and brilliant and I love him. That's not an argument, it's an opinion (actually, of course, it's a fact). It's not less fun...it's just a different kind of fun, and it produces a different kind of relationship to the art. The approach you take as an academic is far more like that of a writer--you have to know the details from the inside out and understand how it's all put together, and how it fits into a larger context. And then you have to generate an argument about how it works, one that can stand up to real interrogation.

For your bonus question, you might want to email Erika. Her second project is, I believe, on Robin Hood plays, which were a folk tradition.

[krismcd59.livejournal.com]

I agree -- the main difference in the academic treatment of subjects is the necessity to account for and acknowledge all the critical work that's gone before you -- not just the primary documents. That can be a slog, especially in Shakespeare studies! It's also easier to get discouraged about having anything to "add" to the discourse, which I think is less a roadblock to creative writers, for whom a distinctive voice and approach to character can provide almost limitless new things to present. P.S. Ellen -- maybe another Salon topic here? the Interstices between academic research and popular art? Academics who write/perform/create art, and artists who are active in academic fields? Hmmmm.... Veronica, have you written anything on this topic that we could discuss in a Salon? Or has matociquala or truepenny?

[tacithydra.livejournal.com]

I think there's a difference - my opinion echoes most everybody's above me.

Going into academia means you're fitting the stuff you love into pre-existing frameworks and attaching them to larger theories. This is cool, because a lot of the time it illuminates aspects of the stuff you love that you haven't noticed before, and that's inherently neat. On the other hand, it means that when you are squeeing about stuff you might drop into language comprehensible only to other academics. In addition, you're not necessarily fitting everything into *your* frameworks anymore. Or if you are, you're going to need to justify your frameworks using pre-existing theory and work.

It's like getting your mind out of the house and forcing it to make friends with other minds. It's harder to be as quirky as you were when it was just your mind, sitting there, noodling around with stuff. On the other hand, as long as you're interacting within the context of the frameworks that everyone else is using, you have access to an entirely new world of geekiness.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I managed to find a way to take the Academic Route without formally studying literature at all. I just wrote papers on Tolkien, and people liked them, and I found myself anointed an expert.

The question I want to ask about Shakespeare is, why did he write a play based on Geoffrey of Monmouth? Considering the sources for his other plays, that wouldn't have seemed to be his thing.

[yaoi-in-exile.livejournal.com]

I've heard of classes teaching ESL: Elvish as a Second Language. XD

The card arrived yesterday!! :D I think I broke some athlete's track records racing inside to read it. I LOVE that card!!! Too much for words! It was so like Riverside! :3 *geeks* (Hey, somebody should teach a class on your Riverside books!! They're certainly deep enough: I can see taking a whole semester unraveling FotK alone! *purr)

Anywho...I was all, "Oh, look, it's...a bit of unused tissue. ...Is this card going to make me cry??" But then there was the seashell, which is very pink and beautiful and now lives in a little silver drawstring bag.

Thank ya'll so much!

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

I've not found a difference because I had no interest in taking the Academic Route (creative writing, critical theory, literary studies, master's and doctorate degrees) unless i loved the subject (and that's true for a lot of my friends in literary studies). However, there are academics who claim that loving a topic will make one a suspect/biassed scholar, and there are people who love a topic but hate academia/academic culture/academic values/etc. and so should not Officially study it.

A lot depends on the person, the topic, the academic program, etc.

What some don't realize is that your most loved topic that you're getting your ph.d. in is not what you'll primarily be teaching because a fulltime teaching faculty person teaches a lot of "service" courses and related courses (some of that depends on what type of department you're in--the larger the department, the more specialize one will be). I'm in a small dept. so teach a wide range of courses.

Tolkien studies is growing, as well as various popular culture courses (maybe not anime as a single focus, but certainly, comics/graph novels/anime and manga exist as a field of studY).

[lareinenoire.livejournal.com]

Difficult question. I'm technically tackling that right now, and while I still love what I'm studying (Renaissance representations of the medieval period), there's a whole different collection of worries and stresses that you don't have when studying on your own. truepenny put it much better than I could and I completely agree with her -- in academia, people are constantly telling you what's 'respectable' and what isn't, and I'm currently running into proverbial brick walls for not using enough theory. ;)

[ladyuranus.livejournal.com]

I guess I fit in a separate category, since I'm not a literature major, but I am a film geek (but not the kind of film geek you'd normally think of-- I just like visual interpretations of story) and now a film student.

I focus mostly on screenwriting, which is my passion, and it's twofold-- I love it because every miniscule detail fascinates me and I love bringing my knowledge from class to a movie I grab on DVD, but I hate it because it makes me incredibly nervous when I'm actually writing that I just can't reach academic expectations. It was far easier to write my screenplay for Nanowrimo than to keep up with deadlines for class.

But I wouldn't change my major for anything-- even if no one will see movies with me anymore. ^_^

[wildwose.livejournal.com]

All of this has been so interesting for me and I don't have much to add to the subject.

I do have an unusually perspective, at least on this thread. You see, I am the academic that could have been. I am 36 years old, a father of two and working artist. And a rather intense Geek on a couple of subjects. Enough so that I can spend time with my academic friends and hold my own in conversations. Particular on subjects I love so much, mythology in general, and Green Man imagery in particular. However, I dropped out of high school at 16. Kinda of a classic case of gifted kid gone bad actually. Ended up marrying young and started working. Ultimately found my bliss as a Renaissance/Fantasy artisan creating leather masks, www.mythicalmasks.com, and I get to help out with a great magazine, www.faeriemagazine.com

I know my brain, I know how I get on a subject. My family tolerates it. And now as I get in that "approaching middle age" aspect of life, and I have written about the subjects I love, I am finding that I am starting to get that "expert" feel about things. It was odd actually in a recently conversation to have a friend with a P.h.d turn to me for clarification on a point. I remember noting it. But where does that put me? A little respect goes along ways towards self-gratification, yet I still find myself longing for a life not lived, a little. I know, I could go to college anytime and still pursue this. However...ugh! The act of wading through all the necessary doldrums, especially without a H.S. diploma to back me up, well, blah! If I could only jump past all the rest to a chosen field of study, and do so with out endangering my families economic footing. Well, wishes aren't dreams.

And I ask myself why? I am getting to follow my bliss. Quoting, of course, someone I consider one of my professors in my field, Dr. Campbell. Joseph Campbell even mentions in one of his books the act of finding inspiration in lots of sources, living and dead, and considering them your teachers. And I was recently quoted something inspiring by another fellow in the Mythic Arts. My wife and I were attending FaerieCon in Philly, where I was blessed to meet our esteemed hostess, (thanks for the conversation here, Ellen!) and we met and were chatting with one of my artistic heroes, Brian Froud. I proceeded to tell Brian something I know he has heard from many Fanboys before. That is, I wouldn't be the artist and success I was today without Brian's work. (And Alan Lee, and Charles Vess, and so many others) But especially Brian and Alan, as a I was 10 year old boy, coming from a desperately poor trailer park background, with very little encouragement and direction to go towards my dreams, I sat in our local library with a copy of their "Faeries" book on my knee and dreamed of fantasy art. Brian said, "Well, at least you get to meet some of your biggest influences, all of mine are dead!", referring in particular to Arthur Rackham. So very important comment and to all my Academically trained influences both here and abroad, I say Thank you! Were it not for you passions and writings, dirt poor redneck dropouts with BIG BRAINS, would not have been able to find their bliss, and dance along the edge of your academic circles. I don't get to have letters after my name, but it a joy to know that it doesn't necessarily matter.
“The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.” -Chaucer

[lynn-maudlin.livejournal.com]

I too relate to the "road not taken" aspect of academe (although I suspect I would have become well and truly obnoxious if I had *sigh*), having derailed my life at with a baby at 17 (a spectacular human, I must say). Probably half of my close friends have PhDs or masters; it's very much the circle in which I move. Ambivalent, I am. Those things that you love, the love can be driven out of you. The frustration of changing a thesis to meet the demands of your committee rather than actually saying what you long to say... well, that would be hard.

But I love that academe has become more broad (SF, fantasy, pop culture, etc. - that's fun).

[paddymeboy.livejournal.com]

I agree with much that has been said on this topic, although we all approach it from a different relationship to official academic discourse. I like a lot of the academic discourse in my field, so I do not rage at the conceptual or formal straitjackets that They make me use when I think about a text; I think of all sorts of even the most abstruse theories --Zizek's use of Lacan's use of Freud; all this newish globalization theory trying to revive and retool certain kinds of Marxist approaches to literature-- as being ideas which help me see what's at stake when I read or look at art, and (it makes me eccentric) I really do use these odd frameworks while I am reading or watching: they're not grafted on afterwards.

I think I'm closest to Veronica's position, in that I really do like to use books, especially the books I like, to put together the kinds of arguments that are of interest (I hope) to other academics. If I have to make those arguments with books I don't like as much, then I tend not to enjoy the finished product as much.

But it's also true that one of the reasons that I got so caught up with lesbian and gay studies, to be renamed queer theory pretty soon after that, was that, first, it was a field in which academics who knew that we had loved certain works of art because we ourselves were gay could finally say so in public, and articulate how that love (whether passionate or mawkish or ironic or unexpected) related to established opinions about these texts in the field. and second, it rapidly became a field (more in English-language than in my own field) in which people deliberately tried to write more stylishly even when not being "personal" in the conventional sense --there was more room for one's sensibility than in traditional philological or historical criticism.

My heart goes out to krismcd and other people who study thoroughly researched and interpreted authors and texts. I have always written and published on recent Latin American authors (some of whom, like Gabriel García Márquez, admittedly have a substantial bibliography already) because I like them but also because the scholarly paper trail on them is a lot less weighty than on, say, Shakespeare. One of the nice things about filling your head full of Foucault and, I dunno, Giorgio Agamben is that if you do "Measure For Measure meets Foucault meets Giorgio Agamben" you can be sure you won't be repeating anything Coleridge said.

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Glad to have you here!